


lose yourself sinking to the sunlight

by lifewasradical



Series: Daylily [1]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Couch Cuddles, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emptiness, Kinda, M/M, References to Depression, References to anxiety, Stream of Consciousness, also kinda - Freeform, idk this is just a whole shit ton of projection from today, maybe just, references to Luke not taking care of himself properly, yikes okay hmm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29096430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifewasradical/pseuds/lifewasradical
Summary: It’s a different kind of empty, Luke thinks, sitting in his living room in silence. Well, near silence. Between the heat blowing lightly from the vents and the wind rustling the foliage outside and the soft noises of Petunia off in the distance doing who knows what in the other room, there’s just a little bit of noise. Something to remind him that he is in fact living right now.Or, Luke can't help but feel empty.
Relationships: Luke Hemmings/Ashton Irwin
Series: Daylily [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2145987
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	lose yourself sinking to the sunlight

**Author's Note:**

> It's projecting onto Luke hours, everyone. I don't know what this is, there really isn't a point to it all that much and I'm not sure what I feel about it, but here we are regardless. 
> 
> This is the first of my fics in a LONG time that hasn't been read by at least one person before posting, so sorry for any mistakes.
> 
> Title from Daylily by Movements

It’s a different kind of empty, Luke thinks, sitting in his living room in silence. Well, near silence. Between the heat blowing lightly from the vents and the wind rustling the foliage outside and the soft noises of Petunia off in the distance doing who knows what in the other room, there’s just a little bit of noise. Something to remind him that he is in fact living right now. 

He didn’t bother to turn the lights on today, just secondhand daylight coming in through the window shades, the afternoon sun not angled towards his living room windows. The space doesn’t feel right, too void of life to feel like a home despite all the posters and knick knacks around the room. It’s lived in, pillows flattened and a stray plate on the coffee table and fluff all over the floor from Petunia ripping open a toy, but lived in doesn’t equal full of life. 

Luke pulls the blanket in around him tighter, hoping to ward off some of the frigid air seeping in through the windows. The silence still echoes in his mind, taunting him with vague fragments of sentences. He can’t make any of them out, nothing more than just whispers. It’s for the best, he reasons, picking at the threads at the bottom of the blanket. It’s well used and worn through in places, one that Ashton had left here some time ago. Luke wonders why he left it there, why he didn’t take it back with him to love and to cherish. Luke doesn’t deserve it. 

He doesn’t deserve a lot of things, Ashton being number one on the list. Luke truly can’t wrap his head around Ashton’s interest in him, between his fucked up mind and his shit disposition. Luke’s therapist actively tries to get him to change that mindset, to focus on the things that he brings to the table rather than the pain that he inflicts, but Luke is showing up to the dinner party with a can of green beans while everyone else brings four-course meals. 

The pressure is insurmountable, trying to measure up to everyone else when he can’t even do the bare minimum. His apartment is a mess, the curls falling down over his eyes are greasy, and he doesn’t have any idea when the last time he slept for more than three hours straight was. Long story short, he’s barely treading water and he’s in the middle of the ocean, miles from the shore. 

Petunia wanders back into the room at some point and tries her hardest to nudge Luke’s arm up, to wiggle her way into the space between his elbow and his chest. Her nose sends a shiver down his spine, cold and wet where it hits his bare arm. Maybe it’s time to put a hoodie on, he thinks, but decides that something like that would take too much energy. 

He used all his strength putting soup in the slow cooker, something so fucking mindless that it makes Luke crazy to think that it drained him of all will to do anything else. He had big plans for the day, tasks on his to-do list that he had been desperate to check off. But instead his mind has decided that he’s unable to do the most basic things like get up to let Petunia into the backyard, answer the two damn unread texts on his phone, even change out of the sweatpants and t-shirt he had worn to bed. 

He tries not to think about the trash bag next to the garage door that needs to be taken out or the box of food for Petunia that’s been sitting in the front hallway since the day it came in the mail. He ignores the mess of dishes that are piling up in the sink and the laundry that is overflowing in the bathroom. He probably needs to clean out the sink and change his sheets too, but every single task just builds onto the next until the tower is so high that Luke can’t see the top of it. 

  
It’s pathetic, staring blankly at the walls instead as if that’s going to do him any good. The shadows are his only friends, moving slowly across the room as the day ticks by without his consent. Maybe if he stares at the repeating pattern on the floor long enough, it’ll swallow him whole and allow some other range of emotions. 

The apathy threatens to strangle him, rendering him useless with a rope around his neck. Well, he already is useless, Luke thinks, locking eyes with one of Petunia’s stuffed toys that’s been sitting in the same place on the floor for days. The beady black eyes mock him, poking fun at the way that he can’t even muster up the will power to pick it up off the floor and return it to the box with the rest of the toys. 

He doesn’t have any music playing and the television isn’t on to distract him from his own thoughts. There isn’t a point in filling the emptiness with sounds when he won’t be able to focus on them anyways. He inhales slowly through his nose, holds the breath for a few seconds, and exhales again. It does him no good. 

Petunia whines quietly, demanding attention from Luke. He gives into her pleas, scratching lightly between her ears. She all but grins, pressing back into his touch as she rolls over to get belly rubs. Luke smiles, just a quirk of his lips and pets her stomach. Sometimes, Petunia is the only thing that gets him out of bed, knowing that there is a living breathing creature that relies on him to survive. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice screams,  _ who’s helping you survive? _ Luke shuts that voice down, asking for his mind to stay uncomfortably empty. 

His phone lights up next to him, another text that he’ll leave unanswered. He wants to see who it is, to talk and seek out companionship but the thought of interacting with anyone else has his stomach tied in knots. Luke accepts his fate, giving into the idea that the couch is going to eat him alive and he’ll find a pleasant home in between the cushions. He proposes the idea of burrowing into the fabric, thinking that between the plush sofa and the warm blanket and the array of pillows, he might get away with no one ever finding him again. 

That plan is promptly destroyed when the front door opens, Petunia immediately rising to attention in preparation to launch at whoever is entering her home. Before the person even enters the living room, her stubby tail is wagging as fast as she can make it go, hearing the sounds from the other room. That means only one thing. 

“Lu?” Ashton calls, keys jingling as he sets them down on the table in the hallway. There’s a pause where he likely takes off his jacket and shoes and a moment where Luke knows he’s waiting for a reply, but he can’t bring himself to speak. Plastic crinkles in the distance, progressively getting louder as he moves through the house. 

It doesn’t take more than a minute for Ashton to come into the living room, carrying around his damn water bottle and a bag of gummies. The sight makes Luke angry, just for a second, before Luke accepts that he’s not mad, but more disappointed in himself because it’s just another reminder that he’s incapable of taking care of himself, his own water empty on the floor and his stomach rumbling. 

“Hey love,” Ashton says, a certain hint to his voice that toes the line between concerned and fond. Luke wants to scream, but nothing comes out. Ashton places his belongings on the coffee table, scanning over Luke’s curled up form in search of something. 

Ashton makes a sound in the back of his throat like he understands, first starting by grabbing Luke’s water bottle and disappearing through the doorway. Luke can hear the ice machine start first, followed by the steady stream of water. It nearly moves him to tears, having Ashton taking care of his most basic needs before he even says a word.  _ Weak,  _ his brain also supplies,  _ it’s weak that you can’t be bothered with trying to keep your body functioning.  _

Again Luke pushes that thought away, focusing in on the way that Ashton returns, circling to the other side of the couch and moving Luke’s legs for a place to sit while putting the bottle on the table. It’s close enough for Luke to reach when he wants it, but not a demand that he hydrates now. As Luke bends his knees to allow space for the other, Petunia launches herself at Ashton, plopping down aggressively onto his lap and throwing her head back. Luke hates the fact that even his dog would rather spend time with Ashton than him. 

He doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he’s unfocused, staring off out the tiny sliver of the window that the shades don’t cover, watching the bushes outside rustle in the wind. Despite how tightly wound he feels right now, he knows that he can’t hide a single thing from Ashton, bad moods or otherwise. 

They continue to sit in silence, Ashton absently petting Petunia until she gets her fix and returns back to Luke’s side, pressing herself as closely as she can. It settles his nerves, just a little bit, to have her weight keeping him from floating off into the distance. His heart rate lowers a little bit and Luke tries to think back to when it started racing but has no memory outside of the thundering feeling in his chest. It’s concerning, the hammering in his chest, but he tries not to dwell on it and instead focuses in on the rhythmic pounding of Petunia’s heart. 

“Silence today?” Ashton asks, lightly taking hold of Luke’s calves through the blanket to put them over his lap. His knees thank him for the movement, more comfortable with being stretched out instead of balled so tightly together. Luke tries not to think about the want to close in on himself, hugging his knees to his chest to protect himself from the outside world. Even if he tried, it wouldn’t be worth trying to close Ashton out. 

Still, he doesn’t speak, just shrugs his shoulders and stares down at the folds of Petunia’s face. Ashton pushes a hand under the blanket and under the hem of Luke’s joggers, laying a heavy hand directly on his ankle. It’s grounding, the physical touch despite being six feet apart. 

Ashton sighs, but Luke categorizes it as an accepting sigh rather than annoyed. “Want me to talk or just sit here?” He asks again, blinking at Luke expectantly with no trace of irritation in his voice. There’s a certain level of understanding that somehow still takes Luke by surprise, being asked what he wants instead of assigned a coping strategy. It makes the rope around his neck loosen, just enough where he can take a deeper breath of air. 

“Talk?” Luke whispers, voice rough from disuse all day. He can’t think of a single time where he’s spoken, words all stuck in the back of his throat, waiting to come barrelling out when his mind lowers the wall. Even when he doesn’t want to speak, Luke is always comforted by the sound of Ashton’s voice. 

“So, I was out at the store a little bit ago, and I found some stupid gummy cherries that reminded me of you since I know how much you like cherry flavored things. The store had so many different options, like I don’t know why they had so many different things. One can only want so many different shaped gummy candies, there’s really no need to make them every single shape in the world. It would be much more acceptable if there were just bears and worms and cherries. But anyway, I grabbed a bag and decided to come over here and check on you-”

“Did you try to text me, I’m sorr-” Luke starts to interrupt, but Ashton cuts him off. 

“I did text you, but you don’t need to be sorry for not replying. You don’t need to always be on and answering everything. I’m glad you were respecting your own boundaries.” 

It makes Luke stop, a tiny weight lifted off his chest that he didn’t even know was there. It’s silly to think that Ashton would have been mad at him for not replying, his mind supplies, but yet Luke always thinks that someday Ashton will wake up and realize that he could have much better than Luke, someone who will reply back and doesn’t need to be babied and can stand up on his own two feet without feeling like a light breeze will knock him over. There’s also the notion of Ashton thinking about him, even when he’s doing something as simple as going to the store that has Luke perplexed. Sure, it makes sense that his boyfriend is thinking about him when they’re not together, but the idea that other people think of him, acknowledge his existence even when he isn’t around, isn’t easily accepted. 

“I… okay. Thank you. I... “ Luke pauses, searching for any words to offer. There’s nothing in his brain but static, thoughts whirling around on a spin cycle washing away any of the feelings that he once had. 

When Luke doesn’t give anything, Ashton smiles, a little more knowing that Luke would like, and moves so his back is pressed against the arm of the couch. He opens his arms, gesturing for Luke to come closer. Almost as if she knows, Petunia jumps off the couch at that moment, trotting off to investigate something in another part of the house. Luke narrows his eyes slightly, “You hate cuddles.”    
  
Ashton offers another small smile, “But you love them, and this is about you. So come here, before I come lay on you.” 

Luke hesitantly shifts to wiggle his way between Ashton and the couch cushions, maneuvering the blanket so that it’s covering both their legs instead. Luke puts his head on Ashton’s chest and tries not to sigh when Ashton wraps his arms tightly around Luke’s shoulders, pressing them together. He listens to the steady beating of Ashton’s heart, letting himself be soothed by the sound. He counts the beats, tapping a finger on Ashton’s ribcage in time with the song that only he can hear. 

Ashton threads a hand into Luke’s curls and Luke has to hold back a grimace at the nasty texture that Ashton must have a handful of. But if he notices, Ashton doesn’t say a word, just twirls a strand around his finger. Luke’s eyes flutter closed against his own will, the need to be conscious leaving him completely now that his brain can acknowledge that he’s safe here, wrapped up in Ashton. 

They don’t say anything, just sit in silence with only the heat blowing and the wind whistling and Petunia investigating to indicate life. Maybe, Luke thinks, this is all that life is: silence punctuated with little signs that maybe, everything will keep moving forward as long as he’s still here to experience it. And he will be, as long as he always has Ashton by his side to guide him through the emptiness. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me on Tumblr [lifewasradical](https://lifewasradical.tumblr.com) 💜


End file.
